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How Many Procedures Should You Get?

Summary: Some people just want to look like someone else. And that’s okay. Sometimes we all want that. But how many plastic surgery procedures to get that look it takes might surprise some people. Indeed, word comes to us that Lacey Wildd, the so-called “human Barbie doll” is trying to undergo her 37th plastic surgery procedure. That number is shockingly high, and doesn’t represent the norm of what most plastic surgery patients experience. In fact, for most plastic surgery patients, the number is significantly lower.

The Question: How Many Plastic Surgery Procedures to Get

Most people who get plastic surgery get very few procedures. Plastic surgery can be, after all, quite expensive. There can be long recovery times involved. And plastic surgery, as with almost anything else, is not completely devoid of risk. For these reasons, among other, most plastic surgery patients refrain from repeated procedures, especially in the same areas, unless there is a reconstructive purpose behind the repeated procedures (for example, due to a faulty breast implant device or to remove drain pumps during recovery—though in both cases, these can be minimally invasive procedures).

Less common—in fact, much less common—is the plastic surgery patient who insists on repeated procedures for an aesthetic purpose. But that’s precisely what’s happening with so-called “human Barbie” Lacey Wildd. The breast augmentation procedure being sought by Wildd will reportedly be her 37th overall procedure and her 13th breast augmentation procedure more specifically. Wildd is looking to increase the size of her breasts to something like QQQ size, against her doctors’ recommendations.

It Takes a Lot to Use Plastic Surgery to Look Like Someone Else

That last part is, perhaps, the most important part of the story. The fact that Wildd’s plastic surgeons are recommending against this procedure (although why this one, at number 37 and not the 36th procedure—then again, maybe they did recommend against number 36 and that simply wasn’t publicized) is quite important, as it illustrates, I think, just how uncommon Wildd’s ambitions are. There are very, very few people who require 37 plastic surgery procedures for aesthetic purposes. And when they do, it’s often because they have an unrealistic expectation of what plastic surgery can accomplish.

Or, on the other hand, they’re trying to look like someone else. It’s interesting how many plastic procedures to get that look people are willing to undergo. There’s a man who’s trying to look like Justin Beiber. There are women trying to look like Kim Kardashian or Britney Spears and so on. Wildd, in her attempt to be a real-life Barbie, doesn’t seem to be terribly different (and it’s worth noting that she likely makes a living off of that appearance, and so she certainly has some financial incentive to keep up that appearance). What I will say is that it seems to me that any endeavor in which you are trying to look like someone else seems inherently more complex than a procedure that takes into account your original features.

Look Like Someone Else or Look Like Yourself

Think about it this way: if you want to look like Kim Kardashian, everything has to work together for the effect to hit the desired results. This means that everything has to be changed. It’s akin to knocking down a house and starting from scratch rather than remodeling a home. There’s far more work (and money) involved in the prior than the latter. This is usually enough to stop most people from treating their face or body as a kind of blank canvas, but it’s not enough to stop everyone.

And, I suppose, in the end that’s between those patients and their plastic surgeons. It’s not for us to judge. However, those “look like a celebrity” procedures do undermine the current ethos of plastic surgery: being your best real self. And, of course, using how many procedures to transform yourself subverts that “real self” mentality. Which, in the end, we suppose is okay—for those few patients who choose to go that route.

Few Procedures for Most Patients

So how many plastic surgery procedures do most people get? Well, one. Sometimes, those procedures are combined with several other, as with the example of a Mommy Makeover procedure. According to the website of the Minneapolis breast surgery experts at Minneapolis Plastic Surgery, a mommy makeover consists generally of three procedures: Liposuction, breast augmentation and tummy tuck. Of course, there are some variations—but they’re usually variations on a theme. It’s not uncommon for procedures to be compiled like this, and to perform more than one procedure at a time, as it consolidates the recovery time.

This type of setup is usually much more common than, say, 37 separate procedures. (To be fair, even with the mommy makeover, sometimes the procedures are performed separately, as much depends on the desires of the patient). Still, 37 is basically the outlier. And it should be viewed as such: as not representing the bulk of work in the field of plastic surgery.

When it comes to most people and how many plastic surgery procedure to get, the answer is in the low single digits (and we mean plastic surgery, not, like, Botox, which obviously will require more procedures). The moral of the story is basically this: we shouldn’t let the “celebrity” plastic surgery patients define what plastic surgery is for everyone else. Because they aren’t the same thing.